Crime & Punishment

Did you have a permit?

There is your reason.

Ahhh ok.... wow... slow on the uptake I guess... I get it now though

Now... where can I join the church of Bacon, and does this come with a tax exempt status?

Fine. There are true faiths, then. See previous examples for evidence.

Ventures are dirt cheap, even compared to Procurer, the cheapest of all the barges. This makes Venture the perfect ship for excursions into Low-sec, NPC/Sovereignty Null-sec, and J-Space (Wormholes), on account of Rule #1 of Eve: Never fly what you cannot afford to lose. They're so cheap, the game will GIVE newbies Ventures for free by doing the tutorial missions; there are 12 sets of tutorial missions and you can do ALL of them regardless of which one you were assigned to by Aura.

This cheapness also means ganking with a catalyst is not at all profitable, so if a gankalyst pops a Venture, it's more likely to prove a message (that NO ONE is safe), to test a brand new ganker for readiness as they are lower on skills than the guys who pop the bigger barges, a competing corp trying to monopolize a highsec asteroid/comet field, or a ganker found that a module or cargo in the ship is well worth the gank attempt (so do not put blue/purple mods, even tank, on a Venture. If you get faction loot from rare rat spawns, dock the loot as soon as you get it).

Avoiding a gank is fairly easy. Watch the local, learn the Direction Scanner (dscan for short), and bug in to a station when you see known gankers or destroyers. Dscan is very useful, and if you go out into more dangerous space where CONCORD will not avenge you, it becomes as necessary as a well-configured Overview, if not more, especially in J-Space where you don't even get Local channel to tell you there are hostiles afoot. This is likely the fish swimming step Plastic refers to. Situational awareness means the gankers will recognize you're not an easy prey, and so they'll go after an easier target if there is one. He is correct; you will lose ships befre you've mastered the Dscan; I've lost quite a few myself for some failure or other related to using that feature.

Procurer is an excellent barge, plenty of tank and not terribly behind the Coveter in terms of yield. Its low ore hold means you'll be making more trips to the station, but that ore hold is so low because the ship's armored up like a cruiser, with very nice shield generators for a "civilian" craft. Procurer has plenty of mid slots to support a good shield-based tank, and two lows can fit a Damage Control Unit (the best piece of hardware you can put on something you don't want exploding, regardless of whether you use armor or shields to prevent boom) and either a MLU or some additional defensive piece.

My current ore Proc is not the best Proc tank, but it has just 2 points shy of 59k ehp against the common antimatter rounds fielded by a Catalyst. I can do better, hitting 72k if I swap out a rig, the med shield healer, and my MLU. And that's just with Tech1/Meta<4 stuff. However, given an untanked Mackinaw for me has 12.5k ehp, it's clear that given a choice between my proc and a typically-fit Exhumer, a ganker will take the juicier target and leave me alone.

Plastic Psycho himself had gone on record on these forums (I don't remember which thread) saying he leaves the Procurer alone when he ganks. The New Order regularly ganks Barges, but even they haven't got a posted kill of a suicide gank on a Proc; the only suicide gank related to a Procurer on James' blog is ironically when the barge suicide ganked the New Order (and failed miserably). More often, the NO used the Procs themselves as scouts and fleet warping beacons for their gankers (who are -10 sec status and have to move fast when in High-sec, and stay in the station until they're ready to gank because of faction police). Note: they do have enough guys that they CAN kill a Proc and post it on James' blog to show rebels that no barge is safe, but they tend to prefer cost-effective ganking, by using those same ships to kill more of the more expensive barges and exhumers, thus dealing more economic damage with the same ship cost to them.

As far as barges go with never flying what you can't afford, Procs fit nicely there, as their hull and preferred modules are cheaper than those of the others. Each strip miner cost 1m+ isk, while tank modules are dirt cheap. You don't need high meta premium editions of a DCU, just the regular Tech 1 or a low meta will do just fine. Tanking for ganks is a balancing act between cost and defense. You want a very high cost-effectiveness when fitting tank, so you have the defense to be a pain in the butt for gankers to kill before CONCORD arrives, but are too cheap for the amount of gankers necessary to kill you to be able to get anything from you.

Above all, don't antagonize the gankers. Making yourself a target by annoying them enough will make them decide to gank you regardless of what you're flying, simply to prove a point. Civility can be just an effective tank as all the shield tank modules on a Proc, as that keeps any consideration of you as a target purely on a cost-effectiveness basis. Even after a gank, civility will serve you far better than rage.

True, you do not have to stay docked, but for those who don't fit tank, or just want to be on the safe side regarding their cargo thus far if they see enough hostiles to theoretically break their tank (6+ gankers could probably break a Proc), docking works quite well, even if at least just to stow away your contents so you won't have as much value in your ship should you head back out and their scouts scan you. That way, even if they break your ship, you still made a bit more progress than if you hadn't docked even briefly.

Docking also works as standard MO for non-combatants in Null-sec (see any complaint thread about AFK Cloaking), or for switching out the mining barge for a combatant ship.

Hit approach to the asteroid and you won't get bumped out of range.


Holy **** I replied in the wrong thread. CCP, Sorry for the necro.

Although i'm a 3m sp noob and I often mine, I think that pirates ganking AFK miners/bots is good for the non afk miners, since they would have less competition and eventually get more profit.
Moral-wise, killing unarmed and weak mining barges is not ethical or honorable, but who cares about that in Eve?

However, mining is inherently an AFK/low attention activity, in all MMORPGs, so expecting miners to have constant attention on the game is impractical, nobody is going to stare at a red laser hitting an asteroid for an hour. Unless CCP were to add some kind of mining minigame.

If miner are literally away from their comptuter then by all means, they should be killed. But if somebody is alt tabbing/using a split screen and doing other things, and occasionally checking the local chat/dscanner for gankers, then I don't think it's ethical to kill him. If miners focus on the game constantly, they might aswell switch to a mo

Says 'I got ganked by "Order" for no reason'

Has no permit.

I really don't know what to say here.

It's a glorious thread, why should we want it to die?